Understanding and Setting Expectations of your Customer – Have you done it?

Written By Arjun Kumar Dwaraka

July 8, 2014 // 04:30 AM

How happy you feel when your customer rates your service as excellent?

How happy you feel when your customer shares his good experience working with you and recommend your organization to others?

Sounds soothing! But how can you make your customer happy?

Understanding and setting the expectations of your customer will lead to excellent customer service, and most importantly high customer satisfaction.

The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations. – Roy Hollister Williams

Here are 5 tips that I would like to share, and these go a long way in helping you know your customer well and meet his expectations effectively.

Learn more about your customer from social networking sites:

I recommend that project managers use social networking sites such as LinkedIn, know more about your customer – his interests, experience and expertise. You also know what others think about him by looking at his recommendations. This may not give you the complete information about your customer, but nevertheless helps you make a beginning. You can take things further, by having a telephonic conversation with the customer or by arranging a face to face meeting.

Know if he/she has any prior experience with eLearning:

This is very important as the way you approach to the customer depends on it. If he has no prior experience with online courses, then you must educate him about the eLearning process, standards etc. In case he has already used the eLearning medium, you have a chance to know about his interests by looking at his previous work samples and by listening to his experiences.

Listen first:

Always listen to your customer first and understand his perspective. When you have a telephonic chat with him, allow him to put his thoughts first. This helps you know your customer more.

Give advice:

Your customer will be happy, when you advice him. The customer will appreciate your efforts if you explain why his idea will not work in a convincing manner.This leaves an impression on him that you are trying to deliver the best product/service.

Compile all the requirements:

Last but not the least, compile all the customer requirements and prepare the scope document. The scope document should mirror your customers’ requirements. Involve all the stakeholders in defining the scope and once the scope document is ready, send it to the customer for his review. . This would ensure that you and your customer are on the same page, when it comes to what he wants.

Hope you make your customers happy by following the ideas shared. If you have anything interesting to share with me, I would love to hear from you.

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